She hadn’t been sure earlier, couldn’t quite tell if his easy charm was just something he pulled out for all the ladies. Sure, it felt personal and attentive and tingly—no, not tingly. She didn’t do tingly. Anyway. She hadn’t been one hundred per cent certain that his flirtatiousness had anything to do with her exactly. He could have been like that with every woman he met for all she knew. In fact, he probably was.
But this, now; this was personal. Focused. He was staring deep into her eyes, as if he hoped to find the meaning of life there—or at least a way into her underwear.
Well. Noah Cross was going to be sorely disappointed.
‘I’ve never had a fling at a wedding,’ she said, purposefully omitting the ‘before’ from the end of the sentence. ‘Before’ implied she was thinking about doing it this time, and she wasn’t.
Oh, all right, she was. Any straight woman with a pulse would at least think about it if Noah Cross propositioned her, she was sure. But thinking was as far as Eloise was willing to go.
‘Don’t you think you should give it a try? Just once?’ Noah leaned in a little closer. ‘How else will you know if you like it or not?’
Eloise pulled back, fixing him with her sternest manager stare. This would all be so much easier if her whole body didn’t hum at the very sight of him. ‘And who, exactly, are you suggesting I have this fling with?’
Noah attempted a self-effacing look, which—kudos to his skill as an actor—almost looked realistic. ‘Well, there is always that old tradition about the maid of honour and the best man. But really, the whole room is full of attractive men—or women, if that’s your thing. All of them famous and at least half of them single—or acting as if they are, anyway.’
‘I don’t date actors,’ she said, the response as automatic and instinctive as saying yes to a cup of tea. ‘And I definitely don’t have meaningless flings with them.’ That wasn’t who she was. She’d worked hard to shake off the assumptions people in this town had made about her, based on her family and her upbringing. She wasn’t about to abandon her reputation now for one night with a movie star, just because he made her body respond in ways she’d forgotten it could.
Except he’d only offered himself as one possibility, hadn’t he? Clearly he wasn’t overly invested in this flirtation. It was all probably just a game to him. To get the repressed hotel manager to cut loose and go wild.
Well, not her. Not a chance.
‘Never?’ Noah raised his eyebrows. ‘Wow. What did we poor, defenceless actors ever do to you?’
‘Not to me. I told you. I don’t date actors.’ It was technically true—Derek hadn’t been an actor when she’d started dating him. He’d been a director. But then the leading man had fallen sick and he’d taken on the role—starring opposite Eloise’s mother. And from there it had been an old, familiar story.
She didn’t want to get into what so many actors had done to her mother. Or, more to the point, what her mother had done to them—and, by extension, what she’d done to Eloise and her father. Derek, the boyfriend her mother had stolen from her, had only been one in a long list of leading men she’d seduced then cast aside. If Eloise had needed proof that actors were all the same, she could pull out the box of old programmes her mother had kept from her amateur dramatics days and put together a list of names that made her point for her. And that was just in her home town. How much worse must Hollywood be? She didn’t want to find out.
And Noah didn’t need to know her sordid history. Especially since she absolutely was not going to sleep with him. No matter how much she wanted to.
A waiter passed and Eloise grabbed another glass of champagne. Melissa was paying for it, and it was her fault that Eloise had found herself in this position in the first place.
‘So, you’ve never dated an actor but you hate us all indiscriminately anyway. Interesting.’ Noah leant back against the bar behind him. ‘Care to tell me why you cling onto this prejudice so tenaciously? Especially since we’ve established that any fling at this wedding won’t be happening between us?’
He wasn’t the sort to give up—Eloise knew that after only a day in his company. If she had to guess, she’d say that Noah was the sort of guy who liked to understand something well enough for his own purposes and then move on. He was only interested in the surface knowledge, enough to fake a part, she supposed.
Well, surface she could do. She just didn’t want to get down to the deep, painful memories that lay underneath it.
Of course, she was pretty sure Noah didn’t want to either. If she actually broke down and gave him her sob story, he’d run in the other direction. That was something to keep in reserve, in case she needed it.
‘You’re all the same,’ she said with a shrug. ‘You fall in love for the length of time it takes to get a movie made, or to star in a play. Then, once it’s all over, you’re onto the next leading lady or love interest. Half your relationships are film promo, as far as I can tell.’
Noah raised his eyebrows. ‘Wow. You really do have a chip on your shoulder about this.’
‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ Eloise challenged. ‘You said yourself you were just looking for a fling.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a fling, as long as both parties know what they’re getting into,’ Noah said mildly.
‘Which is what, exactly?’ Of course he’d think that. It was the perfect justification for never having to have a real relationship. ‘A meaningless encounter with someone you never really get to know?’
‘What’s so wrong with that?’ Noah asked with a shrug. ‘Maybe we’re not supposed to know the innermost depths of everyone we meet.’
‘Perhaps not. But...don’t you want that connection?’ Eloise had to admit she did. Which might be the reason she didn’t date so much. She hadn’t met many guys over the past few years she wanted to get to know that well. But that sounded a bit too much like conceding the point, so she didn’t say it.
‘Real and deep doesn’t mean for ever, Eloise.’ There was a harshness to Noah’s voice she hadn’t heard before. ‘The most real and important relationship of my life lasted barely twenty-four hours.’
She blinked. That was definitely new. ‘That must have been...intense.’ She couldn’t imagine it. From his tone she could tell that, whatever the relationship was, it had mattered—and mattered deeply. She couldn’t imagine how it must have felt to have that and then have it taken away again. What had happened? She wanted to ask but, before she could find a way to phrase the question, Noah spoke again.
‘It was.’ He flashed her a smile that was so at odds with the conversation Eloise wondered for a moment if she’d missed the joke. ‘Enough for one lifetime, anyway. Which is why I prefer things my way these days—fun, light and easy.’
‘And never getting in too deep,’ Eloise said, frowning.
‘That way you don’t drown,’ Noah joked. ‘I know when I’m out of my depth.’
She wanted to ask more, wanted to try and understand his attitude. Not to understand Noah himself, exactly, she realised, but to try and get some perspective on her mother. Was this how she’d felt? Or had she just been incapable of real love, as Eloise had always believed?
Maybe Noah was too. In which case, it was just as well she had no intention of getting any closer to him. A fling might be his sort of thing, but it wasn’t hers. It never had been.
And she was firmly ignoring the small voice at the back of her head whispering, How will you know if you never try it? Especially as it sounded exactly like Noah Cross.
‘So, who was she?’ Eloise asked, but Noah wasn’t listening any more. And, as she followed his gaze to the doorway, Eloise forgot what she’d been asking about.
Melissa